Mindfulness meditation may help slow the progression of HIV, according to scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

They say that meditation does so by relieving stress, and thereby bolster the immune system in HIV-positive patients.

HIV slowly eats away at CD4 T cells to weaken the immune system, and stress can accelerate this process.

The researchers say that mindfulness meditation can help stop the decline of CD4 T cells in HIV-positive patients suffering from stress.

Their study report in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity describes mindfulness meditation as the practice of bringing an open and receptive awareness of the present moment to experiences, and avoiding thinking of the past or worrying about the future.

"This study provides the first indication that mindfulness meditation stress-management training can have a direct impact on slowing HIV disease progression," said lead study author David Creswell, a research scientist at the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA.

"The mindfulness program is a group-based and low-cost treatment, and if this initial finding is replicated in larger samples, it's possible that such training can be used as a powerful complementary treatment for HIV disease, alongside medications," he added.

For their study, the researchers ran an eight-week mindfulness-based stress-reduction (MBSR) meditation program and compared it to a one-day MBSR control seminar, using a stressed and ethnically diverse sample of 48 HIV-positive adults in Los Angeles.